A Man Called Ove: A Novel

Ove stands there staring after her. As if he is expecting her to come rushing back and cry out that she was only joking. But she doesn’t. So Ove turns to the girls. And in the next second he looks as if he’s just about to shine a desk lamp into their eyes and interrogate them on their whereabouts at the time of the murder.

“BOOK!” screams the three-year-old at once and rushes off towards the corner of the waiting room, where there’s a veritable chaos of toys, games, and picture books.

Ove nods and, having confirmed to himself that this three-year-old seems to be reasonably self-motivating, he turns his attention to the seven-year-old.

“Right, and what about you?”

“What do you mean, me?” she counters with indignation.

“Do you need food or do you have to go for a wee or anything like that?”

The child looks at him as if he just offered her a beer and a cigarette.

“I’m almost EIGHT! I can go to the bathroom MYSELF!”

Ove throws out his arms abruptly.

“Sure, sure. So bloody sorry for asking.”

“Mmm,” she snorts.

“You swored!” yells the three-year-old as she turns up again, running to and fro between Ove’s trouser legs.

He skeptically peruses this grammatically challenged little natural disaster. She looks up and her whole face smiles at him.

“Read!” she orders him in an excitable manner, holding up a book with her arms stretched out so far that she almost loses her balance.

Ove looks at the book more or less as if it just sent him a chain letter insisting that the book was really a Nigerian prince who had a “very lucrative investment opportunity” for Ove and now only needed Ove’s account number “to sort something out.”

“Read!” she demands again, climbing the bench in the waiting room with surprising agility.

Ove reluctantly sits about a yard away on the bench. The three-year-old sighs impatiently and disappears from sight, her head reappearing seconds later under his arm with her hands leaning against his knee for support and her nose pressed against the colorful pictures in the book.

“Once upon a time there was a little train,” reads Ove, with all the enthusiasm of someone reciting a tax statement.

Then he turns the page. The three-year-old stops him and goes back. The seven-year-old shakes her head tiredly.

“You have to say what happens on that page as well. And do voices,” she says.

Ove stares at her.

“What bloo—”

He clears his throat midsentence.

“What voices?” he corrects himself.

“Fairy-tale voices,” replies the seven-year-old.

“You swored,” the three-year-old announces with glee.

“Did not,” says Ove.

“Yes,” says the three-year-old.

“We’re not doing any bloo—we’re not doing any voices!”

“Maybe you’re no good at reading stories,” notes the seven-year-old.

“Maybe you’re no good at listening to them!” Ove counters.

“Maybe you’re no good at TELLING THEM!”

Ove looks at the book, very unimpressed.

“What kind of sh—nonsense is this anyway? Some talking train? Is there nothing about cars?”

“Maybe there’s something about nutty old men instead,” mutters the seven-year-old.

“I’m not an ‘old man,’” Ove hisses.

“Clauwn!” the three-year-old cries out jubilantly.

“And I’m not a CLOWN either!” he roars.

The older one rolls her eyes at Ove, not unlike the way her mother often rolls her eyes at Ove.

“She doesn’t mean you. She means the clown.”

Ove looks up and catches sight of a full-grown man who’s quite seriously got himself dressed up as a clown, standing in the doorway of the waiting room.

He’s got a big stupid grin on his face as well.

“CLAAUUWN,” the toddler howls, jumping up and down on the bench in a way that finally convinces Ove that the kid is on drugs.

He’s heard about that sort of thing. They have that attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and get to take amphetamines on prescription.

“And who’s this little girl here, then? Does she want to see a magic trick, perhaps?” the clown exclaims helpfully and squelches over to them like a drunken moose in a pair of large red shoes which, Ove confirms to himself, only an utterly meaningless person would prefer to wear rather than getting himself a proper job.

The clown looks gaily at Ove.

“Has Uncle got a five-kronor piece, perhaps?”

“No, Uncle doesn’t, perhaps,” Ove replies.

The clown looks surprised. Which isn’t an entirely successful look for a clown.

“But . . . listen, it’s a magic trick, you do have a coin on you, don’t you?” mumbles the clown in his more normal voice, which contrasts quite strongly with his character and reveals that behind this idiotic clown a quite ordinary idiot is hiding, probably all of twenty-five years old.

“Come on, I’m a hospital clown. It’s for the children’s sake. I’ll give it back.”

“Just give him a five-kronor coin,” says the seven-year-old.

“CLAAUUWN!” screams the three-year-old.

Ove peers down with exasperation at the tiny speech defect and wrinkles his nose.

“Right,” he says, taking out a five-kronor piece from his wallet.

Then he points at the clown.

“But I want it back. Immediately. I’m paying for the parking with that.”

The clown nods eagerly and snatches the coin out of his hand.